Set up a dynamically allocated HDD, make sure to choose 30GB (as shown): The installed operating system is ~17GB. The base windowsservercore image is 3.8GB. So if you chose the default 20GB HDD, then no Docker containers can run on it.

Point to the downloaded ISO:

Start the VM, take the default settings:

Click on Next: Click on Install now.

Select the Desktop Experience version, otherwise the standard Windows desktop will not be available after Windows is booted:Click on Next.

Accept the license terms:

Select Custom Install as we are installing as a VM:

Take the default for the allocated space:

Click on Next to start the installation: Wait for a few minutes for the installation to complete:It will take a few minutes for the install to complete.

Enter the administrator’s password: Seems like it requires alphabets, numbers, and special characters. The dialog expects to meet the password criteria without showing the criteria. Yes, this is weird.

Entering the credentials shows the Windows login screen:

In a classical Windows, you do a three-finger salute of Ctrl+Alt+Del to view Desktop. This key combination needs to be sent to Windows VM using Virtual Box menu:

Server Manager Dashboard shows up:

Latest updates need to be installed. Click on the Start icon, and search for update: Select Check for Updates.

The update window looks like this: Select Check for updates again.

Latest updates are downloaded and installed:

Once the updates are downloaded and installed, then the VM needs to be restarted: Click on Restart now to restart the VM.

Restarted VM looks like as shown:

This shows that Windows Server 2016 VM is now ready. Subsequent parts of this multi-part blog will show how to configure Docker containers and run a multi-container application using Docker Compose.